Abstract

* More than 100 classic and contemporary thought experiments, excerpted from their original sources, including Putnam's Brain in a Vat, The Liar Paradox, Zeno's Achilles, Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist, Pale's Watch, Hobbes's Ship of Theseus, Parfit's Teletransporter, Quine's Gavagai, Skyrmss' Dyromaniac, Plato's Ring of Gyges, Thomson's Violinist, and Carroll's Loathe Letter, among many others. * Brief and inexpensive, What If... can be assigned as a supplement in a variety of courses, including Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, Applied Ethics, and Introduction to Critical Thinking. * Organized by category, the thought experiments cover the major topics found in most introduction to philosophy courses, e.g., ethics; free will and determinism; philosophy of religion, epistemology, etc. * Each thought experiment presents a puzzling situation that demands a response and demonstrates that philosophy is valuable because many of these thought experiments address a genuine problem in life. * A short “commentary” accompanies each thought experiment, highlighting the important elements of the experiment and summarizing the context in which the thought experiment developed. * Thought-provoking questions and bibliographic entries at the end of each experiment give the reader additional resources for study. * Indexes organize the content by keyword, date of publication and author for easy referencing.